June 18, 1909] 



SCIENCE 



965 



a productive endowment of not less than $200,000. 

 This proviso was made because experience has 

 proved that no college can maintain fair educa- 

 tional standards without adequate endowment. 



The examination which I have just caused to 

 be made of the George Washington University 

 shows that its announced standards of admission 

 to the various schools are not enforced. 



In the college division of the University regular 

 students are admitted with reasonable regard to 

 the stated admission requirements, but of the 

 total enrollment more than one third are special 

 students. The value of the A.B. degree, however, 

 is seriously lowered by the lax administration of 

 the College of Political Sciences and the Division 

 of Education, to which admission is granted with 

 little regard to the published entrance require- 

 ments. The Law School announces a four-year 

 high-school education as a prerequisite for ad- 

 mission, but does not enforce it. Similarly in the 

 Medical School the announced requirements for 

 admission have been repeatedly evaded. If the 

 entrance requirements to this school were actually 

 enforced, the enrollment would be so greatly re- 

 duced that the department could not continue: 

 a result, I may add, entirely in the interest of 

 medical education, since the District of Columbia 

 and the region about it are over-supplied not only 

 with physicians, but with weak medical schools. 



The executive committee feels compelled also to 

 protest against the extraordinary action of the 

 Institution in forcibly retiring two professors, 

 both of whom are in the prime of their active 

 teaching, on the ground that the institution needs 

 to save money by the retiring allowance system, 

 but it is entirely contrary to the spirit in which 

 this Foundation was conceived and is a blow at 

 academic dignity and academic freedom. 



The committee further calls your attention to 

 the extract from the rules for the admission of 

 institutions, " The Trustees of the Carnegie Foun- 

 dation for the Advancement of Teaching reserve 

 the right to discontinue the privilege of partici- 

 pation in the system of retiring allowances of the 

 Foundation whenever, in the judgment of the 

 trustees, an institution ceases to conform to the 

 regulations maintained by the trustees. Such 

 withdrawal shall not, however, result in the 

 discontinuance of retiring allowance already 

 granted." 



The executive committee, by virtue of the au- 

 thority conferred upon it under the by-laws, in 

 view of the conditions existing in the George 

 Washington University referred to above, condi- 

 tions which are entirely out of harmony with the 



educational ideals for which the Foundation 

 stands, informs you with great regret that the 

 relation of the George Washington University as 

 an accepted institution is terminated with this 

 date. 



Very truly yours, 

 (Signed) Henby S. Pbitchett, 



President 



SGIENTIFW NOTES AND NEWS 



At its last meeting the Eumford committee 

 of the A m erican Academy of Arts and Sci- 

 ences voted a grant of $300 to Professor W. 

 W. Campbell, of the Lick Observatory, for the 

 purchase of certain parts of a quartz spectro- 

 graph and to Professor M. A. Eosanoff, of 

 Clark University, a grant of $200 in further 

 aid of his research on "The Fractional Dis- 

 tillation of Binary Mixtures." 



Mr. John J. Carty, chief engineer of the 

 New York Telephone Company, has received 

 from the Emperor of Japan the decoration of 

 the Order of the Rising Sun in recognition of 

 engineering services rendered to Japan. 



The Bessemer medal of the British Iron and 

 Steel Institute has been presented to M. A. 

 Pourcel. 



Professors Yves Delagb and M. G. Eetzius 

 have been elected foreign members of the 

 Linnean Society. 



Mr. Horace Darwin, F.R.S., has been 

 elected a corresponding member of the Vienna 

 Academy of Sciences. 



Mr. Clarence J. Humphrey, assistant in 

 botany in Cornell University, has accepted a 

 position as scientific assistant in forest pathol- 

 ogy in the Bureau of Plant Industry. 



The Bowdoin prizes for essays in English 

 for the academic year 1908-9 have been 

 awarded by the faculty of arts and sciences of 

 Harvard University. Three prizes of $200 

 each were awarded to graduates. The first of 

 these went to C. L. B. Shuddemagen for his 

 essay on "Mechanical Analogues for Electro- 

 magnetic Systems." E. C. Mullenis, the 

 second of the graduate prize winners, had as 

 his subject, "The Neurone Theory; Its De- 

 velopment and Its Present Status." 



Professor Joseph P. Iddings, of the United 

 States Geological Survey, who has been occu- 



